Chapter 5. Customizing the Motif Window Manager

This chapter describes how to set some of the basic mwm (Motif Window Manger) resources:

• Specifying colors for client window frames, icons, menus, and mattes

• Specifying window decorations

• Specifying the size and placement of windows and icons

• Specifying fonts

• Specifying input focus

• Specifying mwm messages using the message catalog

There are three types of mwm resources:

Component appearance resources

These resources specify appearance attributes of window manager components such as menus and icons.

Specific appearance and behavior resources

These resources are used to specify mwm appearance and behavior; for example, colormap and keyboard input focus policies. They are not set separately for different mwm components.

Client-specific resources

These mwm resources can be set for a particular client window or class of client windows. They specify client-specific icon and client window frame appearance and behavior.

For example, you could specify the following resources for mwm in your .Xdefaults file:

Mwm*background: LightBlue
 
Mwm*foreground: Black
 
Mwm*activeBackground: Blue
 
Mwm*icon*foreground: DarkSlateBlue
  
Mwm*keyboardFocusPolicy: pointer
 
Mwm*focusAutoRaise: true
 
Mwm*UseIconBox: true
 
Mwm*iconBoxGeometry: 3x2
 
Mwm*my_application*iconImage: ~/my.bitmap

Notice that the class name for mwm is Mwm.